Marine biologist Barbara Block wins Rolex Award for Enterprise

Barbara A. Block, shown at the Monterey Bay Aquarium in California, has won the Rolex Award for Enterprise.

You don’t pursue marine biology dreaming of awards and prizes.

Barbara A. Block certainly didn’t, but during a nearly 30-year career doing ground-breaking research, the graduate of Springfield’s Classical High School has netted some of the largest prizes that can possibly be reeled in by a scientist – a MacArthur “genius grant” in 1996 and now a Rolex Award for Enterprise.

With a monetary value of $104,000, the Rolex prize recognizes her work in trying to preserve predatory marine animals like white sharks and bluefin tuna in the Pacific Ocean.

Block tracks their movements with a series of underwater listening stations to better understand their behavior. She says the funds will be used to fund those research efforts.

A professor of marine sciences at Stanford University, she is also head of the Tuna Research and Conservation Center on the shores of Monterey Bay.

“When large predators are being eliminated in other regions of the ocean, it’s important that we do all we can to protect and ensure the future of this remarkable ecosystem off our coast,” Block said.

She traces her early interest in science back to the influences of her childhood.

“I think becoming a scientist is the product of parents who gave me enormous opportunities to master nature,” she said.

“In the 1960s, (these opportunities) abounded in the Springfield we grew up in – swimming at camps that were influenced by Springfield College, (such as) the Pine Knoll Swim School; skiing at the local place behind the rolling hills of Westfield, in Blandford, where my father was born and grandparents lived; and going to summer camp in the Berkshires. All those experiences made me close to nature, and helped me build confidence, and an understanding of the natural world,” she said.

In addition, there was the influence of Classical High School, which closed in 1986.

“Classical was a powerhouse in science,” she said. “I remember being in strong physics, physiology and biology classes.”

Her mother, Myra Block, lives in Longmeadow. Her father died in 2005.

“I grew up on Abbott Street and now live in Monterey, California – the only place in California where you feel a bit of the Cape Cod-like New England,” she said.

Her path from Springfield to Monterey went through University of Vermont, the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (where she was first inspired to pursue marine science), Duke University, University of Pennsylvania and University of Chicago. She reached Stanford in 1993.

The Rolex Award, announced in June in London, honors five “visionaries, whose projects have the potential to save millions of lives and protect endangered wildlife and ecosystems,” according to the Rolex officials.

In addition to Block, winners were from Australia, Bolivia, Kenya and Russia. Their work involved such things as protecting the last Siberian tigers in the Russian Far East, training indigenous people in Bolivia, Paraguay and Argentina to conserve the biodiversity of South America’s Gran Chaco, developing a “nanopatch” to replace needles in vaccination, and saving the lives of mothers and babies in a Nairobi slum by providing them with a lifeline to obstetric medical care.